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Transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have been heralded as actors that can avert a climate catastrophe by filling the “emission gaps” left by national climate policies. But can these networks reduce the carbon pollution of power plants, the world’s largest sites of climate-disrupting emissions? Using an international data source on individual power plants, we empirically analyze this issue. Findings reveal that after accounting for their structural properties and the national policies to which they are subject, power plants emit less CO₂when nested in cities that are members of TMNs and this is especially true of plants in less developed countries. In contrast, national climate policies are unrelated to plants’ environmental performance over time. Although our analyses suggest TMNs help to reduce the emissions of the typical power plant, they also indicate they have little bearing on the emissions of the world’s most egregious polluting plants.

Combusting fossil fuels to produce electricity is the single largest contributor to sector-level, anthropogenic carbon pollution. Because sector-wide policies are often too unwieldy to implement, however, some researchers have recommended reducing electricity-based CO₂emissions by targeting the most extreme emitters of each nation’s electricity industry. Here, we use a unique international data source to measure national disproportionalities in power plant CO₂emissions and estimate the fraction of each country’s electricity-based CO₂emissions that would be reduced if its most profligate polluters lowered their emission intensities, switched to gas fuels, and incorporated carbon capture and storage systems. We find that countries’ disproportionalities vary greatly and have mostly grown over time. We also find that 17%–49% of the world’s CO₂emissions from electricity generation could be eliminated depending on the intensity standards, fuels, or carbon capture technologies adopted by hyper-emitting plants. This suggests that policies aimed at improving the environmental performance of ‘super polluters’ are effective strategies for transitioning to decarbonized energy systems.